By Scott Foundas, Variety

Two years after making his U.S. debut with the crackerjack kidnapping drama “Prisoners,” French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve
ups his own ante with “Sicario,” a blisteringly intense drug-trade
thriller that combines expert action and suspense with another uneasy
inquiry into the emotional consequences of violence. A densely woven web
of compelling character studies and larger systemic concerns,
Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s bleaker, more jaundiced
riposte to Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 “Traffic” may prove too grim and
grisly for some audiences and too morally ambiguous for others. But with
its muscular style and top-flight cast, this fall Lionsgate
release should score solid (if less than “Prisoners”-sized) business
from discerning adult moviegoers, along with dark-horse awards-season
buzz.In a terrific performance that recalls the steely ferocity of Jodie
Foster in “The Silence of the Lambs” and Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark
Thirty,” Emily Blunt
stars here as Kate Macer, an FBI field agent who has been forced to don
a Teflon exterior in order to rise through the Bureau’s male-dominated
ranks, and to cope with the depravity she frequently witnesses in the
line of duty. “Sicario” begins with one such grisly find: dozens of
rotting human corpses hidden behind the drywall in a suburban Arizona
home belonging to an arm of a powerful Mexican drug cartel. But the
carnage doesn’t end there, and when the next round of violence erupts
with startling force, it sets the apocalyptic tone for everything that
follows. Indeed, the opening of “Sicario” unfolds at such an
anxiety-inducing pitch that it seems impossible for Villeneuve to
sustain it, let along build on it, but somehow he manages to do just
that. He’s a master of the kind of creeping tension that coils around
the audience like a snake suffocating its prey.

Together with “Prisoners” and Villeneuve’s previous, Oscar-nominated
“Incendies,” “Sicario” forms a loose trilogy about the politics of
revenge and the value of a human life. But whereas those earlier films
were panoramic in scope and choral in structure, “Sicario” unfolds
almost entirely through the eyes of Kate, as she wades into the murky
waters of an inter-agency task force assembled to give the U.S. a
tactical leg up in the war on drugs. Helping to draw her in is Matt
Graver (Josh Brolin),
a sandal-clad, stoner-cadenced mystery man who claims to be a Defense
Department contractor, though Kate and her partner (Daniel Kaluuya)
suspect from the start that he could be CIA. Like more than one
character in “Sicario,” Graver can claim almost as many identities as he
can ulterior motives.

Graver tells Kate that his operation needs her unique expertise, and
while she isn’t fully convinced, she’s still young and naive enough to
believe that there’s a right side in this war and that the U.S. is on
it. Riding shotgun with Graver is another shadow man known only as
Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro)
— the “sicario” (a slang term for hitman) of the title — who is said to
be a former Mexican prosecutor, and who has the solemn intensity of a
man determined to get his way or die trying. “Nothing will make sense to
your American ears, and you will doubt everything we do,” he tells Kate
matter-of-factly on their first meeting — words that double as advice
to the movie’s audience.

The knotty plot that follows demands close attention but never
becomes too difficult (or self-consciously opaque) to follow. It
involves multiple trips back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border as
the agents attempt to use one high-ranking cartel boss (Bernardo
Saracino) to flush out an even bigger one (Julio Cesar Cedillo), though
exactly why is a crucial detail “Sicario” holds close to the vest until
late in the third act. In the meantime, Villeneuve stages one
extraordinary suspense setpiece after another, starting with an epic
traffic jam at the border that ensnares the Americans just as they are
heading back home with a piece of very precious cargo in tow. Using no
special tricks — just the sharp, color-saturated compositions of
cinematographer Roger Deakins; the airtight cutting of editor Joe
Walker; and the subtly menacing score of composer Johan Johannsson —
Villeneuve creates a sequence as nail-biting as any “Fast and the
Furious” car chase, except that here all the cars are standing perfectly
still.

As in the films of Clint Eastwood (whose “Mystic River” exuded an
obvious influence on “Prisoners”) and Michael Mann, the violence in
Villeneuve’s work is savage and startling, but never overstated or
sensationalized, and every bullet fired ripples with consequences for
both the victim and the trigger man (or, as the case may be, woman).
Navigating the crossfire, Blunt is mesmerizing to watch, her intense
blue eyes ablaze with intelligence as she tries to sort out the facts of
the case from its attendant fictions, and whether Graver and
Alejandro’s endgame justifies its ethically dubious means.

Every bit as impressive is Del Toro, who has worked both sides of the
street where cartel dramas are concerned (“Traffic,” “Savages”), but
whose Alejandro is cut from considerably more complicated cloth. He is a
swift, unforgiving man, with a wolfish jowl and the preternatural calm
of the predator lying in wait. Yet he also shudders in his sleep,
reveals flashes of battered humanity when one least expects it, and
even, fleetingly, a Hannibal Lecter-ish lust for the flinty young woman
thrust into his path. And as the film hurtles towards its climactic
abyss, it is Del Toro who holds us rapt with a nearly silent performance
that is the very embodiment of character through action.

Working with a mix of technical collaborators old and new, Villeneuve
has once again delivered an impeccably well-crafted film, not least in
Deakins’ arresting widescreen lensing, which alternates between vast
aerial canvases that capture the epic sprawl of the border land, and
closeups so carefully framed and lit as to show particles of dust
dancing on a shaft on sunlight.